Jago (70 page)

He looked along the sight and saw Jago’s smile, illuminated by the light from his heart. Without moving his hand, he looked to the side and saw Hazel. She was afraid, and shrank from him. At once, he bit down on the pin and pulled the trigger.

H
azel flew or fell through doomdark, kiss sweet on her lips, gunshot terrible in her skull. Cold rushed against her eyes as she followed Beloved. He was ahead of her, tumbling, head in flames. An umbilical ectoplasm stretched tight between their mouths. She touched Him, brushing the hem of His garment. The contact was a sparkshock, bursting Light into her head. Her hand found His, and fire spread to encompass them both. She screamed, but there was no noise. They had lost Heaven.

There were others in the dark, a school like fish, drawn towards a far point. Close to Beloved, Hazel was part of Him, at the centre of the school, warmed by His blazing heart. A greater part of the faithful were along with them. Allison and Jenny were near. Maybe Susan and Paul. They’d all been in the scuffling scrum an instant, an age, before.

A life flashed through her mind, from the kiss-shot towards youth, childhood, birth. She walked for ever backwards, aches massaged from her bones, semen gulped out of lovers with her penis, friends lost and made. She grew smaller, unlearned lessons, shrank into and out of children’s clothes, saw Mama rise from the dead. Then, squeezed between Mama’s knees, burrowing and kicking into the wombwarm.

This wasn’t her life. That was still in her mind, a fragile presence almost crowded out by explosions of alien memory. She was Hazel Chapel, she told herself. A life from London to Brighton, to Somerset. Her hands in clay. Paul, making her laugh without realizing why. She was a woman, not a man, not the Lord God.

Flame rose around them, blotting out the dark. The fire didn’t consume, didn’t even hurt. Together, they roller-coastered backwards, downwards, spiralling towards a tiny dot.

In her mind, He remembered…

* * *

While Jenny watched…

It was like coming home. Alder, the village was called. The name cool and familiar, enduring for ever. The house was perfect, just as he had known it would be. It made him think of Nana Mary and her stories of being ‘in service’. The fear that lived in the house couldn’t touch him. ‘This shall be our Canaan,’ he said. His path written down, it was his duty to follow. There was a little girl watching as the Chosen arrived. He saw her mind, a tiny fire burning on a plain of snow. The day was sharp and cold, and Sister Wendy was tiresomely solicitous. There was another little girl, just out of eyesight, her mind a pillar of ice in the desert. That night, taking his Sister-Love into his bed, he thought of the two girls, and knew they would grow up for him. Their presence confirmed it. The book was opened. This was the place, the place of Armageddon.

* * *

While Badmouth Ben died
…

The Devil had come for him in Leeds, and he was cast down. But faith endured. He did not despair. He could always survive. The Chosen would soon come. He had his spot by the West Pier, opposite the poet who was coming around, and he could fix on minds about him. The hot summer had become oppressive. Knowing which would give him money before he asked, he approached only those. He still wore his dog collar, collected money in a bowl. He felt pity and desire from the women in their sweat-marked print dresses and floppy hats. Women—girls—were all around, in string-and-patch bikinis, browned flesh shimmering in heat haze. Again, he knew which to approach, which to leave alone. Mick Barlowe, the poet, envied his evening successes and joked uneasily, all the while following his own path towards belief, fighting each inch of the way. Under the pier, he took women who were surprised at themselves for surrendering. He opened their flesh, seeking in them a communion with the Lord who had abandoned him. With women in his arms, his flesh inside theirs, he realized the Lord had not truly left. He
was
the Lord.

* * *

While Susan vanished…

Beyond the altar, faces looked up, waiting, expectant. He reached inside for the words, but none came. His text coughed and died in his throat. A rustle of alarmed talk ran through the congregation. He felt a cluster of closed minds. Finally, he found his voice and began to speak, to pour forth the words that swelled from that dead spot inside his brain, the spot that whispered blasphemies. He spoke of fire and insects and the end of all things. He raged against the Lord, and as he raged, people were fixed to their pews, unable to leave. Windows cracked. He smelled brimstone. He felt the sea of despair before him, knowing that all assembled here were doomed. He spoke about death, and darkness gathered in the Church.

* * *

While Jack Boothe tippled…

All through the meeting, he felt JoAnne in his mind, replaying the things they had done. She had only told because he refused to come to her again. He must not give in to his flesh. His nana had taught him that young. The flesh was weak, but you must not surrender. JoAnne had been warm, coaxing and eager. She still was. From Mrs Critchley, he was getting an extraordinary mix of shame and envy, anger and desire. The women hurt his mind, tampered with his faith. He would be happier when they were gone and he was alone with placid, peaceful Jack. The vicar was a secure point in the maelstrom, a human embodiment of the faith that had brought him to the Church. While Jack and Mrs Critchley looked at each other, JoAnne looked at him and stuck out her tongue, moistening her upper lip.

* * *

While Maurice screamed…

His Nana Mary was proud because he would be going to the good school in autumn. He had passed his exam, when everyone else in the class had not. She had raised him by herself, and he owed her everything. He was not like the other children in Brixton, dirty and loud and dangerous. He went to Sunday school every week and paid attention, and he was careful of his appearance. When he thought secretly of Barbara, a girl two years older who lived on the bottom landing, he always punished himself afterwards. Nana Mary rarely needed to punish him any more. He would think of Barbara, who he imagined wore lipstick and kissed boys, for no more than a minute, and then hurt himself. He would take a penny with his thoughts until it was red hot, then pick it up and hold it with his fist. He had penny-size spots in both palms. Nana Mary was proud of him. Jesus was proud of him. After he thought of Barbara, he would try to think of Jesus. His nana would not forgive him his trespasses, but Jesus would.

* * *

While Pfc Harry Steyning witnessed murder…

‘He’s too young to understand, poor mite,’ Nana Mary said, looming over his crib, talking to her friends, ‘Mummy dead under a bomb, Daddy dead in the war, like his daddy’s daddy before him. He’s all alone in the world. Except for his nana. The Lord should love him. No one else will.’

* * *

While Catriona held hands…

He was a woman, and he was a little boy. Mary was afraid, with the witch woman in the parlour conjuring unholy spirits and the Lord knew what else. Billy was barely awake, mother dressing him in the dark, shoving arms into sleeves and legs into trousers. The Spirits had spoken to Mary, had mentioned her married name. Her husband, Tony, was dead in Flanders, but he would not speak through a witch. Mother was telling Billy they must run away, go to live in London where Father had come from. Mary knew the Bible said thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, and warned against false prophets. Only the Lord could decide life and death. When the witch spoke her name, she knew she must leave. There was a curse on her family in this place, a curse that had made her a fatherless shame. It was time to leave. Billy did not want to go to London. He liked the house. He liked Mr Winthrop and his friend, Miss Kaye. But he would go with Mother.

* * *

While Bannerman burned...

He was a girl, Alice, and he was Bannerman. And he was an angel, a burning angel, looking down upon Bannerman’s betrayed face. They were all in the clearing in the woods. Dancing around a bonfire, coupling in the warmth, a life—Mary—sparking in the girl. His own face, seen through flame. Burning, falling, leaving. Fainter, like a shadow, he was another girl and another man, somewhere else.

Beyond the bonfire, the dark tunnel stretched out for ever.

* * *

Hazel was part of Beloved now, along with Jenny and Allison and the others. It was hard to remember herself. She was almost squeezed out, what with Beloved and Mary and Billy and Alice and Bannerman and a growing fan of others, spreading back through centuries.

Throughout all, they were one figure, a burning angel, standing in the woods above Alder, seasons flickering by like shadows, the earth absorbing grass and trees. Clouds rolled backwards. Alder grew and shrank. The swamp encroached, turning village to island. People in old-fashioned clothes were glimpsed. Once, like a flash, the waters were covered with boats, and men with swords and shields battled for a mayfly moment. Before the flash, there was a floating red lake of dead men, afterwards withdrawing armies. Slowly, the island sank under waters, rushes sucked into the bottom mud. All life passed, and saltmarsh turned to sea. And Hazel shrank inside the angel, clinging to Beloved’s everlasting, comfortless Light.

Beloved’s kiss was bitter, and the gunshot reverberated, louder and louder. She thought of Paul, and was snagged on something, her flight or fall arrested suddenly.

Chapelet. That was her name. Not Chapel. Hazel Chapelet.

Something in her mind tore. The others continued the journey, but she was snatched back. She was, for a moment, her old self. The cord between her and Beloved parted, and she felt herself emptying through it, spilling into the dark to be lost for ever. Beloved hurtled away, dwindling to a spark in the blackness, never disappearing.

She drifted on a while, momentum carrying her, but then the drag at her ankles grew stronger. Behind her somewhere was her old life, its pull irresistible. As she fell backwards, she picked up speed.

S
usan had never even thought of flying. She’d levitated objects as heavy as herself, but that always proved a skull-cracking strain and left her with a mental hernia. Now, inside the explosion, she had no choice. Flapping her arms was obviously not going to work, so she extended her mentacles, pushing the ground, hoping for a soft landing. She should do something for the other people in the shower of fire and debris. Sometimes, the weight of the world was on her.

What had happened?

It had nothing to do with her. It was Paul, walking across the room in his armour of pain, James’s gun held up. The first shot had gone wild, into Allison. The second had done the job.

She’d been close enough to see the hole in Jago’s face. The bullet had been between his front teeth and the base of his nose, blasting apart his upper lip, punching into his skull. The crown of his head, where scalp was beginning to show, had come off in a grey-and-black lump…

…and there had been the explosion.

Jago could not still live, his Talent could not survive. David had established that the seat of the Talent was the seat of perception. The brain. Thanks to Paul, Jago no longer had a brain. There could be no more than the last scrapings of cranial tissue in Jago’s toby-jug head.

Beneath her, orange in sunset and the balloon of flame, were treetops. She slammed into a branch, losing her wind and her concentration. Gravity took over, and she fell. A branch broke under her, snapped end scraping.

The struggling clutch of people around Jago fell too, dropping past, plunging through her attempted mental blanket. She felt Paul’s mind, a blot of dental pain, zip by, and saw Hazel, almost floating.

They all came to earth in the clearing, slamming into and sliding along the shingles. Fire rained all around, but did not burn. Susan tried to think away the fire, to quell the heat. Paul’s pain slipped out of her mind, and she felt her own. Her ankle complained sharply. It had twisted under her as she came down hard on one foot.

Hopping, she held a low branch, and looked around. They’d been blown up the hill, several hundred yards away from the house. The fires were collected around Jago and those hanging on to him. His face was a hole with eyes, and the fire was inside him. She willed him dead, not sure whether she was exerting her Talent or praying for divine intervention. Paul lay draped over a bush, gun in his hand. Allison and Jenny were lumped against Jago’s legs, stunned or dead. Hazel was in Jago’s arms, someone’s blood in her eyes. Brick and tile fragments were raining down, pattering like hail against everything. Jago’s head had detonated like a bomb, blasting a hole in the side of the Manor House.

For seconds, everything was almost quiet, and she felt the fabric of reality bending around the standing dead man. Far away, vast and impersonal forces focused on this spot, exerting a tidal pull. If there had to be a second coming, this was when Susan would have wanted it.

There was another explosion. Rather, an implosion. In a fingersnap, Jago wasn’t there. His body folded into a straight line and disappeared, leaving behind a vortex which pulled in everything around. Hazel vanished like a photograph folded over, and the others were distorted, elongating towards the knife slit in reality. Susan felt a wind behind her as twigs, leaves, pebbles and bits of rubbish were sucked in.

It hurt her eyes to look at the wound where Jago had been. It popped, and went away. Hazel fell outwards, on to the other girls. Paul made a grab for her, snatching her away. Dust settled. Susan was coughing, bringing up bricky phlegm from the back of her throat. Her head was clear, all ache gone. Anthony William Jago did not exist.

* * *

Allison Conway was cleanly dead, neck broken in the fall. Susan closed the girl’s still-shining eyes, and extricated her limbs from Jenny Steyning’s. She laid the corpse out properly, and wished she had something to put over Allison’s face. Dead, Jago’s demon queen looked young.